


Look At Me!

by Willowbarb



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire, game of thrones
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-04
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-04-07 21:23:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19093411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Willowbarb/pseuds/Willowbarb
Summary: What do you see when you look into someone’s eyes?





	Look At Me!

**Author's Note:**

> This is Arya’s perspective on the events in ‘What Do We Say To The God of Death?’. 
> 
> It also follows on from ‘Coup de Grâce’.

Arya Stark rode out from Winterfell, determined never to return. 

She had loved her family, a very long time ago, before the old king had come to Winterfell, but it no longer existed. In some ways it was easier to mourn the dead, and she had, but Arya had also lost both of her brothers who were still living: Bran to the world of magic, and Jon to his Targaryen heritage.

Her sister Sansa had changed from being a young girl, intent on wearing a crown, to being a woman, intent on wearing a crown. Arya did not regard this as an improvement, since she had no interest in wearing a crown, nor any intention of playing the role of the heroic Arya Stark, killer of the Night King, to spread the hegemony of the Starks across the Seven Kingdoms. 

She had killed the Night King for the sake of the living, not as a move in the game of thrones. The man she rode to intercept as she left Winterfell understood that, as he understood her. Sandor Clegane had overcome his terror of the flames to help her in that last desperate effort; he neither expected nor wanted praise.

And so, on the long journey south with him, she was free to be herself, to escape from the trap of being defined by her family name, made into something she was not so the nobles could continue to fight for power, ignoring the countless multitudes of people who had given their lives so that all others might live.

It seemed to her that the people jockeying for position saw the battle for the living as a minor inconvenience interrupting the real war; it sickened her. It sickened Sandor Clegane as well, which in some strange way comforted her. 

People like Littlefinger were wonderful with words but rotten at the core; Sandor was the reverse. And as the days went by, so like, and yet so unlike, those they had spent together when she was still a child, she came ever closer to setting a new path for herself. She had one last duty to her family to fulfill, to kill Cersei Lannister, but then she would be truly free. 

But in the end, Sandor Clegane had made her choose life as well as freedom.

As they had stood there on the painted map of the lands brought to ruin by the wars which had torn Westeros apart, the fort crumbling around them, he had made her look at him, and ask herself whether those who loved her would have wanted her to die in the hope of gaining revenge for their deaths. 

That was hard, because in truth she didn’t know what they would have wanted; it had been so long ago.

But when she had looked at him she had looked into his soul, and she did know what Sandor wanted for her. He had been willing to die defending her as a child, just as he had been willing to die defending her against the wights in Winterfell. No father could have done more for his child, and the child who had lost her father had found another in an unlikely guise. 

And so she had looked, and then listened, and did what he had asked her to do because he loved her, and the only gift she could give him was her promise to try to live, and leave the fate of Cersei Lannister to the gods. Afterwards she had wept for him, that his life had been destroyed by the cruelty of his brother, and resolved to take the gift he had given her and use it as he would have wished.

She had held that thought closely to her in the conference at the Dragonpit to divide the spoils of war, now that the fires in Kings Landing had finally stopped burning. It was rather like duelling; she parried the attempts to use her to shore up someone’s, anyone’s, claim to the thrones, and slid aside from those who sought to use the death of the Night King for political advantage. 

And when they asked her what she was going to do she remembered Sandor talking in his sleep one night, something about a ship; he must have been dreaming, but she could take his dream and fulfil it. There were still uncharted waters that went far beyond Westeros, or so they said; Arya would wash the ashes of Westeros from her boots and see what there was to be seen. 

Sandor Clegane would have approved of that.


End file.
